Hi, Aragorn. I’ve been a Krav practitioner for about 7 years and I teach as well. I think Sentoguy has given you great advice. I also notice you said you were a bouncer, so I would use your real-world experience as a measuring stick against what any school tells you, of course.
I would look at what theBeth said & check that out, though most Krav licensing organizations are regionally focused. There are no IKMF schools in my region (Texas). If you’re anywhere near me I’d look for a Krav Maga Worldwide or Krav Maga Alliance affiliation. All an affiliation means, of course, is that they’ve met basic standards for proficiency in practice and instruction. Though I believe you said they’re an ATA school? Is that American TaeKwanDo Association? If they’re offering 2 Krav classes a week at a TKD school, I’d guess they either have an instructor there who has a personal interest in RMA and wants to work on that with like-minded people (good) or the owner of the school took a weekend Krav course because he saw it as a way to expand his client base but has no actual passion for it (bad).
I will say I disagree about training with those who have less than a Black Belt. There aren’t very many Black Belt instructors in Krav, frankly, and it takes several years to get there. By the time someone becomes Black Belt instructor they must have many years of teaching “under their belt” so to speak. Being a Black Belt student doesn’t qualify one to teach. Licensed instructors go through a great deal of training in transfer of knowledge, safety in training, effective classroom management for differing student needs, etc.
One thing that is very important to look for is stress drills. This is an effective way to achieve what Sentoguy was talking about when he mentions having the ability to be competent in different terrains/environments and when you weren’t expecting it. Some of the things I’ve experienced as a trainee are unexpectedly having a glass of water thrown in my face and being choked (so now you’re blind & everything is slippery), being suddenly hooded from behind with a disgusting sweat soaked shirt & getting dragged around backwards by my head, being slapped in the face to stun me before an “attack”, being overwhelmed by multiple attackers, etc. I will also say that doing some groundwork outside in the parking lot is useful, as much as it sucks. The stones embedded in your skin and scrapes from the pavement teach more about avoiding fights than any lecture I’ve heard. Even being exposed to these different types of things once helps to shorten a freeze when one is in danger, so that’s a plus if the school looks for opportunities to work in this fashion.
That being said, safety in training can’t go out the window. I was training in a seminar last month and the excercise was the trainee has his eyes closed & he’ll have 2 attackers with weapons. He opens his eyes on cue, not knowing the location & distance of his 2 attackers. I froze when something I did didn’t work & the teacher had to yell at me to keep going. One of the guys in another group was flailing & kicked one of his partners hard in the face,. It was an extremely stressful, all-out effort drill (hence our different reactions), but the inherent danger in doing this kind of stuff means you have to learn to both push yourself and control yourself under stress. It’s difficult, but if you can’t control yourself when the situation doesn’t call for deadly force you’ll be opening yourself up to doing time for assault or even manslaughter. So this guy needs to rein in it and I need to go harder. The instructor has to be adept enough to be able to get us both where we need to be.
I’d watch out for a school that is very dogmatic. Krav changes frequently by nature to address changing trends in violence. Just in the last year a few techniques have been altered and even removed because too few people can perform them properly under stress. Also, your strengths/abilities and mine will be different. The techniques are there to serve the student’s needs, not the other way around.
So that addresses some things to look for in a school, but you also said you’d like to find someone to train with outside of class. It might be worth it to attend a few of the Krav classes even if you don’t like the place to see if you find someone you click with who might want to train outside of class. The fact that they’re there means they have at least some interest in self-defense type training, so you may get lucky.
Missed your input around here.